(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a packet scheduling method and apparatus and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for performing packet scheduling in consideration of a port of a different switch, as a virtual port.
(b) Description of the Related Art
As wireless Internet services have been activated, wireless Internet traffic has been rapidly increased. A wireless communication resource is limited in a bandwidth of a public frequency, and thus, in order to accommodate fast-growing traffic, communication resources are required to be expanded and supplemented, for example, additional installation of base stations and the like.
Supplement of communication resources through expansion of base stations and the like is fit to further accommodate low-quality best effort service traffic such as Internet traffic, but causes a problem accommodating high-quality traffic such as voice communication or the like. That is, due to a great amount of Internet traffic, voice traffic is delayed to cause voice communication to be cut off, and the like. Thus, in a wireless access network in which wireless Internet traffic and voice traffic are mixedly used and transferred together, traffic scheduling is required, namely, quality of traffic should be classified according to types of traffic, and high-quality real time traffic such as voice communication should be preferentially transferred.
However, a small packet switch installed in an existing base station does not have a scheduling function based on quality grade, so there is a difficulty in replacing small packet switches of numerous base stations with packet switches having a scheduling function in order to enhance communication quality.
In addition, an existing scheduling apparatus performs packet scheduling according to a service grade in a switch system, complying with quality of communication service, but when it interworks with a packet switch without a scheduling function, communication quality is drastically degraded overall. Thus, in order to control communication quality on the whole, all switches connected are required to have a function of scheduling traffic according to a service type, making it difficult to manage quality.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.